


One More Try

by kronette



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Back to Earth, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kronette/pseuds/kronette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I watched the Director's Cut and liked it. Maybe because I finally understood the <i>Bladerunner </i>references. Maybe it was tighter. Maybe time heals. Who knows? Here be Lister's thoughts after the end of <i>Back to Earth</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Try

Seeing Kris again, even if she wasn’t real, was like a knife to the gut. Lister almost rather have died by his ‘creator’ than have to face losing Kris again. Faking her death to get away from him? How desperate did you have to be to go to such lengths? Was he that horrible a person? Was he that disgusting?  
   
For awhile there, he was. He’d lost himself to alcohol for a couple of years, unable to face the reality of his life. Even with four other people around, he felt alone. Without the earth under his feet, without wind and rain and sunshine, his weariness ate at him day after day, month after month, year after year until he said the smeg with it all. He’d lost countless days, weeks even, to being unconscious in a drunken stupor. Kryten never said alcohol poisoning, but Lister knew. Oh, he knew on some level what he was doing, but he didn’t give a smeg.  
   
Kris kept her distance, growing more aloof and cold as she resigned her fate to staying on the _Dwarf_. Not her ship, as she continued to point out to anyone who would listen, which wasn’t anyone at the end. Not even Rimmer, who sucked up to her superior officer status, could stomach her, “well, _my_ Dave,” or, “on _my_ ship,” for very long before he holed up in the lower decks.  
   
Kryten was, well, Kryten. Loyal to Dave first, last and always. Lister just wished he’d have _told_ him that Kris was that unhappy. Maybe he could have done something about it. Maybe he could have…  
   
He sighed and shuffled along the deck. Nothing he said or did would have made a difference. If Kris would rather pretend to be dead than spend another minute with the last man alive, then there was nothing he could have done. Abso-smegging-lutely _nothing_.  
   
It still sucked and it still hurt. It might always hurt. True, he’d left the hallucination with his mind set on finding and winning Kris back. But now that he was back in reality, reality was sinking in. If he hadn’t been able to win her over in nine years, what did another nine matter? She was his fantasy girl, the dream he wasn’t supposed to get, the pin-up girl with the pinball smile that teased but never gave back.  
   
“You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?” Rimmer interrupted softly.  
   
Lister looked up, startled that he’d made it back to their quarters unawares. “Who do you mean?” he asked, knowing full well who Rimmer meant, and Rimmer knew it as well.  
   
Rimmer was sat at the center table, idling skimming his fingers along the edge of his _Astronavigation for Idiots_. Rimmer surprised him by stating quietly, “I didn’t know about Kochanski. Kryten never told me.” He looked up, and Lister was stunned at the sadness reflected in Rimmer’s eyes. “I know what she meant to you and I’m…sorry.”  
   
He walked up to the console and sat opposite Rimmer, straddling the chair backwards. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Rimmer. You just said you didn’t know what Kryten had done.”  
   
Rimmer’s eyes fixed carefully on his own hands, still flipping through the corner of his book. “I’m sorry you can’t ever seem to get what you deserve.”  
   
He leaned forward, not quite sure where Rimmer was going with this. “I what?”  
   
Rimmer shook his head with a frown of disgust. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like…” he sighed in exasperation. “You deserve _happiness_. First the Kochanski mess, then the bollocked up Kremlin Kate fiasco…”  
   
“What do you mean?” Lister asked, resting his chin on his forearm. “She was just another part of the defense mechanism of the squid, wasn’t she?”  
   
Rimmer shot him an odd look, like wasn’t sure if Lister was kidding or not. “You didn’t find it the slightest bit odd that she was another hologram? That she ordered me terminated because I was a “bit crap” at being senior officer?”  
   
“Well, you are a bit crap at being senior officer,” Lister bantered easily with a slight smile. “What’s that got to do with anything?”  
   
Rimmer averted his gaze to something intensely interesting on the floor to his right. “Within her first minutes on board she ordered me terminated, told me I was doing shit-all at keeping you from going insane, chided me for letting the ship fall to pieces, berated me for allowing Kryten to go on holiday, and basically said I was a waste of ship’s energy.”  
   
“You know that’s not true,” he tried to counter the severe words. Katerina had been way over the top with Rimmer, ordering him to be shut off _and_ blasted into space _and_ _then_ exploded by nuclear bomb.  
   
But, if they were all hallucinating, then who had she come from? Who hated Rimmer that much? Lister’s gut twisted as a memory niggled at the back of his mind, something he didn’t want to remember but thought vitally important. He leaned over and caught Rimmer’s expression.  
   
The hologram was ashen and a haunted look darkened his eyes, but he still wouldn’t meet Lister’s gaze. Rimmer’s voice trembled as he said, “It didn’t strike you as odd that she was a hard light hologram with dark hair?”  
   
“I didn’t think much of it at the time, no,” he admitted, but thinking back, it was strange that they hadn’t dreamed up a flesh and blood woman. “But now that I know we were all dreaming, she had to come from somewhere, didn’t she? Someone had to think her up as a…” What the smeg? _Happy thoughts_. That’s what Kryten said the squid had given them: happy thoughts. She was a hologram in a blue uniform with dark hair. No, he couldn’t. Rimmer wouldn’t, would he?  
   
He reached out and placed his hand on Rimmer’s arm. “Hey – hey, look at me,” he called softly.  
   
He watched as Rimmer swallowed and raised his eyes. The hollowed-out look twisted his gut again. “Why’d you think her up? She wasn’t there to make you happy,” Lister stated, knowing it was the truth. He just wanted Rimmer to admit it.  
   
He was shocked when Rimmer did just that. Rimmer’s voice was hard as he snapped, “If I’d been even a sliver of the man she was, you’d be home by now, or you and Kochanski would have had a dozen babies. You’d be happy.” The fire seemed to leave Rimmer as quickly as it came and his gaze dropped away, but not before Lister caught the shine of tears on his cheeks. “I couldn’t keep you happy, though God knows Kryten and I tried. I watched you nearly die at least three times from alcohol poisoning. I dragged you to the medibay when you nearly crushed your skull after falling down the stairs. I couldn’t watch you self-destruct and I couldn’t stop you.”  
   
The tear-filled green eyes met his, and the despair took his breath away. “I wanted to give you everything you deserved. Someone competent, someone you could love, someone who wouldn’t constantly screw up and make things worse, like I always do. You deserve so much better than me.”  
   
Lister was fighting back tears. Where had all this come from? Was he so blind for Kris he hadn’t seen how much he was hurting his best friend? “Maybe I don’t deserve you,” he admitted thickly. “Maybe I do. I haven’t been a saint all these years, you know, Rimmer. You’re a smegger and I’m a recovering drunken space bum. Maybe we’re meant for each other.”  
   
Rimmer barked out a sickening sort of laugh and wiped his eyes. “The perfect odd couple, eh?”  
   
Lister rubbed a sleeve across his eyes, dredging the tears across his cheeks. “None odder,” he agreed. He sobered as he remembered how he’d reacted to Katerina and what Rimmer had said about someone he could love. “I never could, you know,” he announced quietly.  
   
Rimmer licked his lips and sniffed back the few remaining tears. “Couldn’t what?”  
   
He met Rimmer’s eyes. “Love her.”  
   
The hologram reacted as though he’d been slapped, a wounded, pinched expression trying to mask the raw emotion. “Oh,” he said eventually under his breath.  
   
Lister continued in a soft voice, “You see, I already have love in my life. I’ll always love Kris, even if she never loved me back.” He wasn’t intending to hurt Rimmer, but he could see the hologram shrinking into himself as the weight of the words settled on him. “And I know Kryten and Cat love me in their own way,” he added quickly, needing to drag Rimmer out of the depression he was sinking deeper into.  
   
“Of course they do,” Rimmer groused, his tone both wistful and sad.  
   
“So that leaves you,” Lister began, “Me other half, the Laurel to my Hardy, The Laurie to my Fry. I know you love me, Rimmer, and I love you, too. We’d have killed each other long before now if we didn’t.”  
   
As Rimmer’s astonished expression swiftly changed to one of embarrassment, Lister couldn’t hold back his full smile. “Come on, Rimmer. Let’s go tease the Cat about his wardrobe. You know he’s trying to scrub the squid ink stains out of that lavender jumpsuit. It’ll be a laugh.”  
   
Rimmer’s hopeful, fearful expression caused his heart to beat just a bit faster.  
   
“You don’t mind me coming along?” Rimmer questioned hesitantly.  
   
He rolled his eyes, stood up and tugged at Rimmer’s sleeve. “I invited you along, didn’t I?” He toyed with Rimmer’s sleeve as he stood up, then moved to lace his fingers through Rimmer’s. He held fast as Rimmer tried to snatch his hand back. “Breathe, Rimmer,” he ordered.  
   
Rimmer obeyed and nearly choked on the air he sucked in. Lister laughed. “Don’t ever change, Rimmer.” He half-pulled Rimmer down to the Cat’s deck, following the echoing wails of frustration.  
   
The End


End file.
